1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic service system for providing services such as electronic commerce, information providing, etc., on network such as the Internet.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many of the electronic shop or electronic commerce systems and electronic services (information retrieval, portal site, electronic bulletin board, etc.) on the Internet are constructed on a basis of the WWW (World Wide Web) system. On the client computers to be used by users of these electronic shops and electronic services, a software called WEB browser (or simply browser) is operated. The user makes an access from the WEB browser to a server computer of the electronic shop at which the purchase of goods through the Internet is desired or a server computer that provides the desired electronic service, and carries out viewing of goods information, goods purchase procedure, information retrieval, information exchange, etc.
On the server computer, a program for executing functions of the electronic shop or the electronic service is operated, to carry out the sales processing such as presentation of goods description or price to a customer, inventory check upon receiving an order from a customer, payment processing, and delivery arrangement, etc., for example. There are also cases where the server computer manages the past transaction logs according to the user information of the customers and provides services such as goods recommendation suitable to each customer and discount sales. The server computer may also carry out communications with computers of the other service companies as in the case of credit card settlement, for example.
The WEB browser on the client computer and the electronic shop or electronic service program on the server computer carry out communications using a WWW standard communication protocol called HTTP. In the HTTP protocol, a set of request and reply is used as a basic unit of communications such that when a request containing an identifier of the processing request called URL and any necessary information associated with that request is sent, a reply containing data such as HTML document for displaying the processing result will be returned. In the electronic commerce, the request is sent from the client computer toward the server computer, and the reply is sent from the server computer toward the client computer.
Usually, in the electronic commerce on the Internet, the user authentication is carried out to fulfill the need related to the security. In the user authentication, a password specific to the electronic shop or electronic service is used to verify that it is a legitimate user, and then an access to a menu on the server computer is permitted. Here, the user information is utilized not only for judging whether or not to permit an access by the user, but also for obtaining the user specific preference information based on the past access logs as mentioned above or for controlling preferential treatment according to a user class. Also, the more strict user authentication is necessary especially in the case of charging an amount to be paid for the purchased goods in the electronic commerce, in order to deal with the illegal act such as the pretending by the malicious user.
Now, such an electronic commerce (EC) or electronic service on the Internet is becoming very popular in recent years in conjunction with the advance of IT (Information Technology), and it is said that a practice of providing commerce or service on the WEB site can make it possible to start a business with respect to the whole world covered by the Internet at relatively low cost, but there are also several problems such as the following.
Problem 1: Site management such as contents updating is tedious.
In order to make the WEB site attractive to users, there is a need to update contents frequently such that the users will be visiting the WEB site many times, but a small scale WEB site has limited human resources that can be directed to the site contents updating such that this limitation can result in the lowering of the competitiveness as the EC site. Although there is an option to introduce the automatic updating tools, the cost for introducing such tools can be a problem.
Problem 2: Smooth regional service extension is difficult.
When the information providing site contemplates the regional service extension by posting locally limited regional information (such as a train transfer guide, for example), there are cases where it is preferable for the original operator (provider) to maintain the original site design and use the locally limited regional information only in some limited contents so as to take the advantage of the already established brand name value while entrusting the site operation to a local operator of each region. This strategy is important in a sense of avoiding the risk associated with the regional service extension and eliminating tasks for managing many sites. In other words, what is desired is a framework in which the outsourcing of the site operation is possible while using the single brand name.
Problem 3: Opportunities for finding potential users are limited.
The success of the EC site critically depends on how to promote actual visits to the WEB site by many end-users, after all, unless it has a special feature such as contents with special appeals to some maniac users. Consequently, it is preferable to be able to post many business information on the WEB from a viewpoint of the EC site operation. For example, it can happen that a small scale site with many portal sites and interconnecting links will have a greater chance of being visited by users compared with an EC site of a large scale operator which can only be accessed electronically at a single URL. Of course, the large scale operator may have some other advantages such as the established brand image, the ability to utilize commercial media other than the Internet (such as commercial messages), the scale cost merit in relation to the inventory management and the distribution, etc., but as far as the electronic media are concerned, the crucial factor is to have the exposure to the users at as many sites as possible.
Conventionally, links by banner advertisements have been available as a way of realizing such a partnership, but the space available for the banner advertisements is limited and the merit of the partner site for presenting features of the EC site is limited by definition to just the banner advertisement fee, so that this technique has only a limited effect.
As described, conventionally, the site management to promote many visits to the WEB site by users has been indispensable at the WEB site for providing the electronic commerce or the electronic service, but the limited human resources available for this purpose has been a problem for a small scale operator.
On the other hand, from a viewpoint of a large scale operator, it can hardly be said that the advantages of being a large scale operator are fully taken in operating the EC site, especially in the electronic environment, and a scheme for expanding business to many sites while taking advantage of the brand image has been needed.